The Strength of the Wolf

by Douglas Valentine

  “Thompson broke us up into two-man teams and scattered us around the hotel, so we’d have the meeting covered. I went with Thompson and we checked in to a room; we set up our equipment near a window overlooking the lobby, and we waited, and after a while the machine activated and automatically turned on the tape. While I’m listening, I start scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad. As I recall, Baker and Bromley were mapping out a business deal that had something to do with grain silos in Texas. It was about a twenty-minute conversation, and I took about six pages of notes, which turned out to be lucky, because as we found out at the trial, none of the KAL sets had worked, and my notes were the only admissible evidence.”

  “This was all happening very fast,” Thompson says. “Baker and Bromley were supposed to be in the hotel lounge, but they went into the hallway instead. So we were set up in the wrong places. But we did have Salmi’s notes, which enabled the Justice Department to prosecute.”

  As a result of the FBN surveillance, Baker was indicted in 1966 for tax evasion and the misuse of campaign funds. Stunned, the Johnson administration drafted a bill restricting wiretaps on anyone but political subversives. Next, Senator Edward Long (D-MS) decided to hold hearings on illegal FBI wiretaps, and through his inquiry he came to learn of the FBN’s safehouse activities on behalf of the CIA. Long asked Treasury under secretary Joseph Barr for an explanation, but Barr had no idea of what was going on behind his back. So, on 22 January 1967, Barr summoned the CIA’s assistant deputy director of plans, Desmond Fitzgerald; MKULTRA boss Sid Gottlieb; the Treasury Department’s General Counsel, Frederick Smith; the acting assistant secretary for law enforcement, True Davis; and Andy Tartaglino’s boss at Main Treasury, undercover CIA officer Tony Lapham.21

  Barr commenced the meeting by asking if the CIA was using the FBN as a cover for illegal domestic operations. Playing coy, the Agency men said the only activities they knew about were old ones, in which audio equipment had been loaned to the FBN for tests and then returned. They noted that Pete Niblo had been transferred to the San Francisco office in 1955, but they neglected to add that George White was setting up his little MKULTRA shop of horrors at the time. Though unaware of the MKULTRA Program, Barr confronted the CIA with the fact that audio equipment had been purchased by the FBN, “for CIA purposes” – at which point the disingenuous CIA officers checked their watches and said they had to go. A meeting to discuss that delicate issue was scheduled for the following day.22

  At the 23 January meeting the CIA officers met alone with Treasury General Counsel Smith and admitted that they had given the FBN $20,000 worth of receivers and microphones. There was no indication that these were the KAL sets used in the Baker surveillance, nor was there any mention of Marty Pera’s dalliance with Devenco in New York. Smith, however, did ask if the equipment was used by the FBN so the CIA could get around “jurisdictional troubles” with the FBI. He also inquired if it was true that the FBN maintained “a lab” for the CIA on the West Coast. A deafening silence ensued, and a third meeting was hastily scheduled.

  On 24 January, at the direction of Richard Helms (acting director of central intelligence since June 1966), Gottlieb met alone with Henry Giordano. According to Gottlieb, Giordano said that if the CIA wanted to avoid a flap, it ought to “turn the Long Committee off.” The meeting ended on a sour note, and the CIA decided to help LBJ and the FBI pull the plug on the FBN.

  At a final meeting on 25 January, Gottlieb told Smith that the CIA had, in fact, given money to the FBN for a “pad” (not a lab), but that it was used only for FBN operations. Gottlieb admitted that the CIA had shared in the intelligence take and had “obtained information from the FBN on informant behavior … which was of obvious interest to us in connection with our own investigative work.” But, he added, the arrangement had been terminated in 1965.

  Gottlieb’s explanation satisfied Barr, Smith, and Senator Long, and by Tartaglino’s account, Tony Lapham ordered him to shut down the New York MKULTRA pad shortly thereafter. As Art Fluhr recalls, “We gave the furniture to the Salvation Army, and took the drapes off the windows and put them up in our office.” And Tartaglino opened a more luxurious CIA safehouse on Sutton Place.

  Like any CIA cover story, the one given to the Treasury officials and Senator Long was plausible enough, and the implications frightening enough, to subvert their investigations. The truth, however, is that the CIA was deeply involved in the drug business, at home and abroad. Guarding this dirty little secret was its motive for wanting to eradicate the FBN, which was rapidly expanding overseas and trespassing on the CIA’s covert operations. But first the CIA had to protect its FBN assets, including incorrigible Sal Vizzini.

  CIA DAMAGE CONTROL

  “When I got to Bangkok in 1963, it was the same thing as Turkey,” Vizzini explains. “I had to grease the foreign cops to send out crews, and when they were ready to make the case, I’d step in to supervise and take photos. So I put down in a report that I was in Chiang Mai when a seizure was made, even though I got there four hours later. You’re not supposed to do that, but Siragusa had sent me to Thailand specifically to steal cases from Customs, so we could justify setting up an office in Bangkok. Then Charlie found out about the CIA hit gun I’d found in his car in Italy, and that’s when he forgot that he sent me to Thailand to sink Customs. Next thing I know I’m down from a twelve to an eleven. He also accused me of profiteering on the black market in Turkey, which was totally untrue. Hal Fiedler, the CIA officer in Istanbul, had asked me to buy, and later sell, some office equipment as a way of bringing certain police officials into his camp. None of the money went into my own pocket. But the last straw came when I stood up for Gene Marshall. I testified at his trial that I thought he’d been set up.”

  Gaffney wanted Vizzini to stay in the FBN and accept a transfer to San Francisco, but the CIA told Vizzini to fade the heat. They said they’d take care of him, and when he resigned in June 1966, they helped him to get a job as police chief in South Miami. Vizzini was protected, as were other FBN agents, like Ike Feldman. But by 1967, the FBN’s overseas contingent was stumbling onto more and more CIA drug deals, so the spooks decided to commandeer overseas drug law enforcement altogether. The decision was shared with the protected few, but everyone felt the impact, and not everyone liked the feeling.

  FBN Agent John G. Evans, for example, was not happy with the way things were unfolding. A case-maker and a man of rock-solid integrity, Evans joined the FBN in 1955 and served continually in his hometown of Detroit until his transfer to Washington in 1966, where he became an assistant to enforcement chief John Enright. At this point in time, according to Evans, Giordano and Gaffney had argued over personnel assignments and were no longer on speaking terms.

  “Headquarters was still very small,” Evans recalls. “There was a chief counsel, two lawyers, two inspectors, and Andy as liaison to Treasury. And there was a planning and research office under Ernie Gentry and Walter Panich, which kept watch over Customs and the BDAC deal.

  “Enright had about 260 agents worldwide, but Cusack alone handled intelligence. Cusack had the foreign desk and worked with Schrier’s International Group and the agents overseas. I had domestic enforcement, and my big problem was James V. Bennett, the director of the federal prison system. Bennett was complaining to federal judges that the prison system was overflowing with small-time drug violators, and that there were disciplinary problems as a result, all because of the Daniel Act. So the law was rewritten and Main Justice told the US Attorneys that, henceforth, they needed permission to proceed under the mandatory sentencing rule.

  “My other problem was the CIA. Giordano sent Cusack to Australia, where the Mafia was moving in through the vegetable business, and while he was gone I covered foreign operations; and that’s when I got to see what the CIA was doing. I saw a report on the Kuomintang saying they were the biggest drug dealers in the world, and that the CIA was underwriting them. Air America was transporting tons of Kuomintang opium.” Evans glares angril
y and says, “I took the report to Enright. He said, ‘Leave it here. Forget about it.’

  “Other things came to my attention,” Evans adds, “that proved that the CIA contributed to drug use in this country. We were in constant conflict with the CIA because it was hiding its budget in ours, and because CIA people were smuggling drugs into the US. But Cusack allowed them to do it, and we weren’t allowed to tell. And that fostered corruption in the Bureau.”

  According to FBN enforcement assistant John Enright, “The deepest, darkest secret of the FBN was its relationship with the CIA. It was a legacy of Anslinger, who wanted to be a spy. That’s why he accepted Andy Tartaglino like he did Charlie Siragusa. Siragusa was crude and unsophisticated, but was held in awe by Anslinger because of his CIA contacts. George White too.”

  Enright sighs. “Vietnam was the worst. We called Air America ‘Air Opium.’ Our office in Bangkok made a case on an Army major [Hobbs] who was caught with opium. But the major just disappeared, because the CIA was behind it.”

  For his part, George Gaffney claims to have met with the CIA on only two occasions: when he signed nondisclosure statements in New York and Washington. He does acknowledge that the CIA was involved in the Cotroni and Pardo Bolland cases, but he won’t say how. “I only sent one piece of information to them about an associate of a dope pusher we seized,” Gaffney claims. “I never went to CIA headquarters, and the CIA passed along only useless information to me.”

  CIA officer Jim Ludlum begs to differ. After transferring to the CIA from the FBI in 1955, Ludlum served as a desk officer, then joined headmaster Angleton’s counterintelligence staff as a planner, working with the Pentagon, FBI, State Department, and White House to plan operations around the world. In 1962, he became Angleton’s deputy chief of liaison, handling the CIA’s relations with domestic law enforcement agencies. “Jane Roman was the boss,” Ludlum recalls. “She personally handled liaison with the FBI through Sam Papich, and I had everything else, including the FBN. About once a month I met with Giordano or Gaffney just to keep it alive, though there wasn’t much to report. I also worked with Larry Fleischmann at Customs. In any case, there was no narcotic coordination before I got the job.”

  “Listen,” Gaffney says, changing the subject when confronted with Ludlum’s statements. “It got so bad after Valachi that I applied for the San Francisco job. White was getting ready to retire, and I asked Henry to be transferred there as district supervisor. Henry said the job was Fred Dick’s.” Gaffney grimaces. “Then Belk said I was leaning on him, so Henry banned me from New York. From 1966 until 1968, I was a fifth wheel. I had no authority, except over import-export documents, and I couldn’t make any personnel appointments. But Andy Tartaglino did.”

  Gaffney was not the FBN’s only fading light, and Tartaglino was not its only rising star. “Fred Dick was a Giordano man,” Enright explains, “and on a trip to Los Angeles to investigate an illegal wiretap that Fred had authorized, I met with George White and his wife Albertine in San Francisco. White was a fire marshal then, and very ill; he had gone down from about 225 pounds to about 175. Somehow White knew about the wiretap and was glad to talk about it, because he hated Fred Dick. He actually threw his badge on the floor in front of Fred on the day Fred took over the office. White said in disgust: ‘Here! You’ve always been after this.’ ”

  Ironically, soon after White retired, the specter of MKULTRA threatened to surface publicly for the first time when New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison decided to investigate the Kennedy assassination. According to an FBI teletype, Garrison’s inspiration was David Copeland, an attorney from Waco, Texas.23 As stated in a book he wrote on the JFK assassination, Copeland’s source of information was a report written jointly by an FBN agent and a Customs agent tracking Kennedy’s assassins to a group of Texas ultras.24

  Knowing that the investigation might lead to MKULTRA assassination plots, the CIA galvanized its forces, and in its 1967 IG Report, there is even a section titled, “Should we try to silence those who are talking or might later.”25 After Garrison arrested Clay Shaw and charged him with the murder of JFK in March 1967, the Agency began to discredit Garrison by linking him to Carlos Marcello in an 8 September 1967 Life Magazine article titled “Brazen Empire of Crime.” Texas Governor John Connally helped as well by preventing Sergio Arcacha Smith’s extradition to New Orleans as a witness in Clay Shaw’s trial. If the reader will recall, Smith was identified as having traveled to Dallas with Rose Cheramie, who was murdered on 4 September 1965.26

  Seeking protection, John Roselli dutifully fed Washington attorney Ed Morgan a tall tale, fabricated by James Angleton, which Morgan in turn passed to columnist Jack Anderson. Printed in the Washington Post in March 1967, the story claimed that three Cubans, captured in a raid on Cuba in 1963, were turned by Castro and sent back to kill Kennedy out of revenge.27

  This concerted effort to deceive the public tracks back to the FBN’s involvement in the MKULTRA Program, and the CIA’s overarching need to keep that a secret. It also concerns Andy Tartaglino’s integrity investigation, which in 1967 included Ike Feldman and some strange things that were happening at his CIA-funded safehouse at 212 East 18th Street. Unlike the other FBN agents Tartaglino targeted, Ike Feldman, then leader of Group One, had an ace up his sleeve, and he allegedly threatened to expose the FBN’s involvement in the CIA’s assassination and sexual blackmail plots, unless Tartaglino backed off. Such an admission would lead the inquisitive to the CIA’s use of the MKULTRA safehouses to move drugs on behalf of its Kuomintang and Burmese clients. Just to prove his point, Feldman, according to George Gaffney, leaked some tantalizing tidbits about MKULTRA to certain congressmen and to Walter Sheridan, a former FBI agent serving as a consultant to NBC on the Garrison disinformation case. Having got his message across, Feldman accepted a transfer to Boston, and two years later he retired.

  Roselli was spared for the time being, as was Robert Maheu, whose boss, Howard Hughes, had sold his shares in TWA for a cool $546 million and had bought the Desert Inn in Las Vegas from a group that included Meyer Lansky’s close associate Moe Dalitz. Hughes terminated Maheu’s services and replaced him with the CIA-backed Robert Mullen security firm. Hughes’s move on Las Vegas, and his hiring of the Mullen firm, reflected the CIA’s realignment with organized crime on behalf of an evolving Establishment. A major player in this southwestern element of the espionage Establishment, Hughes had been working with the CIA since 1953, when his Houston-based aircraft manufacturing company started making spy planes and satellites for the Air Force. From 1960 to 1963, he let the CIA use his Caribbean island to launch raids against Castro. In return for these and other services, Hughes’s helicopter business would make millions off the Vietnam War.28

  At this critical juncture, the CIA dispensed with another liability. After spending a year in jail for refusing to testify to a grand jury, Sam Giancana was released in late May 1966 and fled to Cuernavaca, Mexico. According to his son, in the book Double Cross, Giancana managed the CIA’s narcotics operations through Santo Trafficante in Asia, Carlos Marcello in Latin America, and Carlo Gambino in Europe.29 This seems an outrageous claim; and yet, upon his return to America in June 1975, Giancana was shot in the head, CIA execution-style, while eating a bowl of sausage and peppers, just a few short weeks before he was due to testify to Congress about the Kennedy assassination. One month later, Jimmy Hoffa disappeared. A year after that, following a meeting with Santo Trafficante in August 1976, John Roselli was murdered, dismembered, stuffed in a 55-gallon drum, and dumped in the Miami River.

  In 1967, the protectors were working overtime. After Senator Long proposed a bill to limit electronic surveillance, he was accused by Life Magazine of having taken a $160,000 bribe from Jimmy Hoffa. Though exonerated, Long was soundly defeated in his next election.30

  Plugging the last hole in the national security safety net, LBJ signed the FBN’s death warrant. The process began in January 1967, when Johnny Thompson testified at Bobby Baker’s trial.
In an effort to get Thompson out of the line of fire, Giordano had transferred him in 1966 to Albuquerque, New Mexico. But that wasn’t far enough away.

  As Thompson recalls, “I was visiting with an informant in Gallop, and I called the office just to let them know I was there. Well, a few minutes later the phone rings. Gaffney’s on the line. ‘Don’t get excited,’ he says, ‘but we’re going to have a conference call. Where will you be?’ I asked him to call me back at my motel. The moment I get there the phone rings; it’s General Counsel Smith at Treasury, and he wants to know what happened with Bobby Baker. I tell the truth and forget about it. A few days later, I’m called back to DC to meet a Justice Department attorney, who says he’s going to put me on the stand for the Baker trial.

  “Well, the reports from the wiretaps were never written up, and I’m worried. But it didn’t get that far. The first question the defense asked me was, ‘When did you join the FBI?’ Not the FBN, the FBI. They thought I was an FBI agent! At which point the truth about the FBN came tumbling out.”

  Thompson shrugs. “A few years later, when I was acting chief inspector at the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, the chief counsel, Don Miller, took me aside and said, ‘You know, LBJ tried to fire you over the Bobby Baker thing.’ ”

  “Thompson testified in the afternoon,” George Gaffney recalls, “and within an hour, two White House aides had come over to Bureau headquarters and picked up my and Thompson’s personnel files. It was late afternoon, and I had to go to Secretary Barr to explain. He was livid, and wanted to know why I got the FBN involved in a non-narcotic case. Hoover had turned it down. So why did I do it?”